PointReleaseProcess
To be carried out by: nominated stable release manager, with support from the stable release updates and release teams
Goals:
- Refresh hardware support in LTS releases for carefully-selected hardware
- Roll up accumulated stable updates into updated images to reduce download requirements for new deployments
- Maintain stability of existing installations
Between Release minus 6 months and Release minus 2 months:
- Discuss candidates for new or improved hardware support with affected parties. Some sources for this work should be:
- the Canonical support team (via Steve George)
- customers
- the Ubuntu kernel team
- the Ubuntu QA team
- Establish a hit-list of bugs to fix in the point release using a milestone. Milestoning bugs is not a commitment to including the changes in the point release; they may be deferred after further information becomes available.
- In concert with affected developers, triage the hit-list for feasibility.
Release minus 2 months:
Process stable release updates as normal. For hardware-enabling fixes, the package should be tested on the affected hardware prior to submitting to sign-off for -proposed.
- Discuss the possibility of a Canonical press release for the point release with Gerry Carr.
- Liaise with IS, QA, community and certification to arrange for testing resources.
- Canvas OEM and Support organizations for any bugs important to try to get fixed.
Release minus 1 month:
- In coordination with QA, verify that all candidate bugs are fixed.
Upload a new base-files package to -proposed to bump the lsb_release description (example for 8.04.4). Do not change the DISTRIB_RELEASE value, which is used programmatically by third-party software.
If the kernel or associated modules have been changed, upload debian-installer after all the binaries are in place. If the ABI changed, make sure to take account of this throughout debian-installer/build/config/ and in the installer seed for all flavours being built.
- Notify Evan Dandrea to update umenu and wubi for the point release.
Change cdimage/bin/make-web-indices, cdimage/bin/publish-release, and debian-cd/CONF.sh to use the new release version number.
Change cdimage/bin/run-germinate, debian-cd/CONF.sh, and the cdimage crontab to build from -proposed temporarily.
- Build CD images (which will be published on cdimage.ubuntu.com) and smoke-test in some convenient environment to check for obvious failures.
Release minus 3 weeks:
- Contact IS, QA, and/or certification as appropriate to request testing for hardware recertification.
- Iterate CD images as needed based on testing feedback, in coordination with the kernel team.
Release minus 6 days:
- Once testing is verified to be complete, move packages to -updates.
- Turn off CRON jobs that will auto update into -updates until final images are tested.
- Build candidate release images and populate into iso tracker.
- Prepare change summary and release announcement
script to use for preparing the change summary: http://people.canonical.com/~cjwatson/lucid-updates.py
- if this is the final point release for the distroseries (because a new LTS will be released soon), include a reminder of this and of the support cycle/EOL.
- Notify web publishing team (Richard Lee) of the upcoming point release.
- Include summary list of actual file names of ISOs that will make up releases.
- Include detailed information about which image file names will change on the mirrors for the point release, and which ones will not.
- Discuss release stability and handoffs on release date.
Release:
release images as final, and move the previous images to old-releases.ubuntu.com:
- Check with James Troup whether the previous point release needs to be moved off before prepublishing due to mirror space constraints.
- Prepublish images:
DIST=lucid for-project ubuntu publish-release ubuntu-server/daily 20100708 server poolonly (similar for alternates, desktops, etc.)
- TODO much more detail here
- Notify Web team (Richard Lee) to update the iso URLs on the ubuntu.com website
- Create a snapshot of the archive:
lp_archive@cocoplum:~$ point-release-snapshot lucid lucid.1-security-updates-snapshot
which will create a hardlink farm in ~lp_archive/point-releases/.
File a bug on ubuntu-website to have https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuHashes updated.
- work with release and web publishing team to monitor mirror pickup
- verify download from ubuntu.com
- verify download from one of the mirrors
- send the announcement mail (see archives for past examples)
- ubuntu-announce
- ubuntu-release
- notify press release team (Gerry Carr) - if needed.
Release +1 day:
- restore the .manifest.full file on releases.ubuntu.com
- deactivate the just released "point release" milestone target
- send out update to people running previous LTS (after migration testing completed).
- get final summary of updates for release(see lucid-updates.py script), and publish to ???
- gather feedback info for future improvements to process